Questions about the project

Re: Questions about the project

by Gina Bennett -
Number of replies: 9

hi Mary (& others)

I've been reading through the documents (thanks for these Mary!) & I do have a few questions...

First, I have a few questions related to the "Find Open Textbooks" front-end for the database of textbooks we are accumulating in this project. What I wanted to do was to browse the 12 reviewed texts mentioned in the Narrative document. So I went to this website & saw that there are 28 available results but I wasn't able to find a way to display all 28 results: the most I can display at any one time is 10. Am I doing something wrong? Also ... is there some way to tell ahead of time whether or not a listed text has a review available for it? 

Also, I'm surprised that there has been so little interest in the adaptation phase of the project. Does anyone have any ideas as to WHY the uptake has been so poor? Do we have any feedback from the faculty who reviewed the original batch of texts: what was the process like for them?

Moving forward...

Gina

In reply to Gina Bennett

Re: Questions about the project

by Mary Burgess -

Great questions as always Gina, thanks. I've asked Clint to respond to the ones about the technology.

With respect to the reviewers, we didn't do a formal process to get feedback but the conversations I've had with them haven't indicated it was overly onerous or technically challenging except in one case where we had some initial difficulty displaying formulas. We also had several of the reviewers from last time apply to review more texts in this round, and I'm assuming they would not have done so if they didn't like how it went the first time around. That all said, I'm now going to send a note to the people who completed reviews for us and see if they have any feedback, so thanks for the prompt!!

In reply to Mary Burgess

Re: Questions about the project

by Mike Winsemann -

I think it's a good idea for those that did reviews to share some of their experience.  I read some of the reviews submitted and some of them were very comprehensive. It was clear the reviewer spent considerable time and effort, and the contribution is appreciated. I wonder, however, if this may be intimidating to those considering submitting a review.  Some may not feel they have the time to commit to submitting a review.

Outside of taking the time to read the book, the writing of a review probably shouldn't take too long, especially since you have nicely broken down the different areas to be reviewed (Relevance, Clarity, Consistency etc).  If a potential reviewer knows a little more about the time commitments, they may be more willing to give it a shot.

FWIW, I think that there is momentum building towards this project, even if at times it seems a little slow. OER has been a constant source of conversation at most system meetings I have attended in the past year.  This was not the case the year prior. As greater awareness is achieved, I think you will find greater levels of participation and adoption.

Cheers,Mike

In reply to Mike Winsemann

Re: Questions about the project

by Clint Lalonde -

That's a good idea, Mike. I think maybe a post spotlighting one of our reviewers and what it takes to do a textbook review for us is a good idea.

And thank you for the note about momentum. Really appreciate hearing that. And again, thansk for having us come out to the BCCAT JAm a few weeks back. I have followed up with a number of faculty who were in attendance and am hearing some good feedback from them, including at least one new adoption that I was unaware of before.

In reply to Clint Lalonde

Re: Questions about the project

by Mike Winsemann -

Glad to have been of help.  I thought your session at JAM was well attended, and it's clear that even if not everyone is jumping on board, they are very curious to watch this project unfold. 

Upwards and onward.

In reply to Gina Bennett

Re: Questions about the project

by Clint Lalonde -

Hi Gina,

Great point re) making reviewed texts easier to find. We are working on a way to indicate in the list of textbooks if it has a BC faculty review or not to make it easier to find the textbooks that have been reviewed, which is important for those who are supporting faculty. It will take some programming on our end, but it is on our to do list. For now, you can find the list of reviewed textbook resources here: http://open.bccampus.ca/forums/topic/list-of-textbooks-with-reviews/

I'll also make the point that it is our hope that ALL resources will have at least one review associated with them, so the problem of only searching for resources that have reviews should lessen as we get more and more reviews. So, this is (hpefully) a temporary inconvenience for the people who only want to see reviewed resources.

As for the display of 10 per page, this is an intentional design to paginate this way to make the interface a bit more useable. Rather than have a long scrolling page of resources, we have paginated the results to make the list more manageable.

Hope that helps!

Clint

In reply to Clint Lalonde

Re: Questions about the project

by Gina Bennett -

Thanks Clint. I'm glad to hear that the 'reviewed' identifier will be added to the list of books in the future. I do understand that these things take time.

Yeah, I think I understand now how the display of 10 per page thing works. Thanks!


Gina

In reply to Gina Bennett

Re: Questions about the project

by Clint Lalonde -

Hey Gina,

This morning we added a bit of code to the open textbook site to make it easier to distinguish which of the textbooks in the collection have been reviewed by BC faculty.

http://open.bccampus.ca/find-open-textbooks/?subject=

In reply to Clint Lalonde

Re: Questions about the project

by Gina Bennett -

Hey Clint, that is SLICK!!! Just about a perfect way of introducing that additonal information, I would say.

Thanks!

Gina

In reply to Gina Bennett

Re: Questions about the project

by Clint Lalonde -

Thanks Gina. Credit goes to our developer, Brad Payne. He takes the "hey how about...." ideas and makes them real. So great to have him on the team.